Summer Project Residency


During the summer months the Anchorlight gallery closes to the public and is converted into studio space for the Summer Project Residency. One artist or collaborative team uses the gallery as a studio workspace to create a body of work, installation, or performance to be exhibited during our fall exhibition schedule. The Summer Project Residency is by invitation only at this time.

Stacey Kirby

2024 Summer Project Residency Artist

During her residency at Anchorlight Gallery, Kirby is focusing on the research and development of a new performance work titled "The Division of Ancestral Deeds." This work explores our connections to ancestors and lineage, both individually and collectively. Kirby is delving into family histories—spoken and unspoken—generational trauma, and the diverse interpretations of truths passed down through ancestral lineage. Her time at Anchorlight will culminate in a fall/winter exhibition in the gallery, inviting the public to participate in her research and development through performance and installation.

Performance at North Carolina Museum of Art. Photo by Alex Maness


Bio


Kirby is a queer, white-bodied, self-appointed civil servant from North Carolina who creates socially-engaged interactive performance art. Her performative interactions set within site-specific installations utilize bureaucratic forms, postures and language in vintage office environments to engage participants and community performers in questions around civil authority. Through humor and satire, Kirby reinvents the bureaucratic process in alternative, private and public spaces to elicit diverse dialogue about identity, community and human rights in the United States. Kirby's work takes place in traditional art spaces and alternative public spaces such as restrooms, billboards and protests. Developed over the past 20 years, in more than 200 performances, with over 300 community performers and 10,000 participants, Kirby’s work evolves with the physical and historical setting, political climate and participants’ involvement at each location. 

Stacey Kirby. Photo credit: Eli Gray